Death Wishes
by Bony Hearts
Summary: There's a blond child curling into Mycroft's laps, sound asleep. Sherlock gets that look of his when he scents an interesting and very puzzling case. John doesn't want to think that Mycroft'd kipnapped the child (British Government or not, Lestrade's number is on his speed dial) and even more so if the boy was Mycroft unknown son. Deaged!England.
1. Chapter 1

**Warning: **Deaged!England for a while, violence and angst all over the place.**  
**

**Disclaimer: **I own nothing.

It's a multi-chaper story. (Approximately seven parts)

Enjoy.**  
**

* * *

**1.**

There was silence in the air, breeze passing like a longing hand, a fleeing touch, soft, short and tingled.

Blue eyes rested solely on the figure of thousands years of life, little now, with shoulders still straight like lines, but softly curled over the edges – battles and loves, strength and tenderness, blood and tears.

The leaves so deeply green they might be withered in the human gazes and petals of smooth crimson silk rustled - as if whirring sounds in a far-off space, in a far-off mind, leaving quivers of unfathomable fear and lost. _Here we stand as so many people, so why do we feel the loneliness crawling at the flesh of our souls?_

Green eyes looked out, away, traveling far and deep, even when the solid small body of their owner sitting there, looking as though bones and guts and skin melting into the chair, all seeping, draining into the earth, becoming just what he truly was.

"How can you even-," it came out like voices belonging to the memories of time long gone in the past, like a silent breath in a lone dark room, feeling so strong it squeezed the hearing ones' hearts, desperation like earth-infuriating, fear like heart-stopping, eyes-widening and pain like soul-wrenching. "You're selfish. This is selfish."

It stabbed, it hurt more than thousands of knives and swords and arrows that had once pierced through his body, leaving scars buried deep into the fiber of his inner soul. He couldn't breathe – in just a brief passing of nanoseconds – the corners of his eyes tight and dry. His child-like body urged him to wrap his tubby arms around himself, hugging, securing, isolating.

Like thousands years ago when forests and mountains were reigning, sheltering and hiding and comfortably intimidating; when he was helpless and scared and always heart-fluttered as though a constantly frightened rabbit.

He turned his head to meet with the other's unwavering cerulean gaze, feeling his soil shifting, his air whispering, his blood in veins oozing and his pulse thumping for his million lives.

And he smiled.

* * *

The tea had long turned cold.

On the table that separated the three of them.

Old walls were embraced with new wallpapers – the tastefulness of putting up, of the lonesome of a so long life – seeming to brace themselves, inhaling and exhaling through dust and wood, looming over them all like ancient presences bearing the burden of historical witness mixed with normal secretive routines. There was a portrait on the wall facing Mycroft, a very old painting – still not fading in shades and powerfully deep and conveying the atmosphere, the spirit of one of the greatest leaders of Britain. He could feel the burn in her meticulously drawn eyes, catching his ones, twisting his inside and reprimanding his mistake, his unobservant.

How sour that tasted, ripping the contour of his tongue.

Mycroft folded his long fingered hands – smooth on the outer side but rough the inner, tight as though a thousand of iron grip; his umbrella was guarding his side, straight and dark and dangerous and leaning against the Victorian chair he was residing and so very readily near his reach.

His eyes kept lingering on the small figure resting in the large sofa opposite from his, curling into its own clothing and skins. The back of the sofa was like a flowery tidal wave going high, ready to snap and engulf that tiny body with a neat wipe of sharply soft and suffocating cushions. So dangerously vulnerable, so infuriatingly defend-less and neglectful.

Yet he held back his reasonable distaste and unacceptable insecurity. Mycroft would never tell it, indeed, felt like his skin was peeled off delicately, vaguely and achingly exposed and slightly taken-aback.

All shown with an almost invisible crease of just one well-kempt and noble brow.

"I know my presence make you worried," it was a sharp cut in the air, grazing the silence with a neat and solemn incision, almost infectious. The afternoon light poured into the room through the closed high window, wan and strangely grayish yellow, touching the man, who had been speaking, like faint steam, shadowing his facing-away face and blond lock. That man, he looked young, profile showing fitness and power, his voice a blank liquid to the eyes, yet seeped and neutralized and mingled with layers upon layers of experiences and knowledge the short life of a human being could not yet fathom.

Mycroft felt his every muscle fiber tensing, coiling into discomfort and overpowered; the line under his left eye formed clear, but he was nothing if not carefully composed, insightfully prepared and imperiously proactive.

"Despite the alliance between our both countries, I have good reasons to be alerted," Mycroft replied, watching the man's hands tightening and broad, strong shoulders stiffening in a fast movement, the sound of shifting clothes heard as though a rough rub to an opened wound. Mycroft's eyes were razor-sharp, thoroughly observing, analyzing and tearing apart.

The information was overwhelming, solely one body but millions behalves. History, no, histories. Flows of lives, flows of over two hundreds of year. Looking like human, yet existence proving anything but – Just like the child laying there, chests rising and falling, continuously, immortal, and who – what – where – he had sworn his life to protect and devote.

"Stop. Manipulating. Me." The blond gritted, still standing there in front of the window, turning into a raged statute, every word pulled out like bullets, iron, time-wearing and wrath of so many. "I do him no harm."

Mycroft lifted his brow, gazes narrowed whilst legs remained crossed elegantly, smoothly stiff. "Of course, we don't want that." Vivid blue eyes snapped at his profoundly deepening and warning ones; Mycroft's left palm reached pointedly right beside his umbrella as his right tipped off to the direction of the smallest body in the room. "Regardless of the relative relationships, Mr. Jones, we all don't want wars."

The muted atmosphere was oppressive, readily to be blown off, exploding and unstoppable, as if there were necks to strangle, throats to choke out and hearts to rip apart with limbs. "_Don't_ threaten me," the sentence rolled out of Jones' tongue like icy fire, a deadly calm madness.

And Mycroft was not a Holmes for nothing, a behind-the-scene leader with strings to living and lands-like marionettes, having been facing madness, being the madness, seeing its madness and capturing that madness (- And it would be a "will" later on, because human could never outrun it, could never separate it from the picture of life).

"Then, explain to me, _how?_"

* * *

"It's his plan," Jones had explained in a rapid tone like a certain firing gun. Years of practices had forged Mycroft to hide his surprise and essentiality well; it was so much similar to listening to Sherlock's deductions, it was just less brilliant, not fact and logic but pure honesty. Though shocking and mad and firm all the same. "Arthur's been acting strangely lately, thinking over something, perhaps about this. I came here two days ago when he'd already transformed. I don't know when he changed, don't ask, I have no idea how he did it in the first place. And you come to my emergency phone-call this morning, he's been unconscious since."

Mycroft waited, feeling his mind speeding, racing.

Jones was silent for a few minutes, his jaw working as if tasting, testing the words that had already been told and those that hadn't yet, his hands balling and his feet stopping pacing, standing just behind the sofa to flex his palms and brace one of them on the craved edge of the back of the furniture. He seemed to want to reach out and touch the worryingly-still-unconscious boy, but Mycroft's gaze was all crimson signs.

Jones inhaled tenderly harsh as though he was angry and confused and controlled at the same time. The blue of his hues traveled far away beyond the scene he was in, beyond the understanding of human beings. "He's doing the thing people like us had long wanted to do. But so far all we had got were pains and chaos."

This time Jones purposefully stretched his arm to comb his fingers through soft, infancy strands of ashen blond hair, watching Mycroft now as he tensed instantly and the handle of his umbrella was tightly in hand. "I'm not happy." Jones continued like a threat merging into a comment about weather, like the air hadn't dropped cold one bit. "I can take him to my home, look after him then, as he had once done to me years ago. I can, and I want to, to break this wish of his, break this game he's playin'."

The glistening sharpness of something like a sword was pulled out under Mycroft's certain and deadly fingers with no hesitance. The alerting button to call security teams was waiting to be pressed, to even bring down this man, this likely-threat, this representative if needed.

May there be a lot of paper work and explanations to make. May there be war looming over the heads, but endangering one nation is to endanger its whole citizens and lands and much more. The world could burn itself if Mycroft failed to protect England himself.

Jones didn't break their both eye-contact, azure glinting and dancing in odd shadow and light, burning. "But being away from his own home, land and people for long, he will be hurt. And I've said before, I will do him no harm.

"Therefore, don't need to-"

* * *

A much smaller hands held tight onto Jones' bigger one and yanked, making him off-balanced, cutting off his sentence.

"Stop being pettish," a boyish voice was resounded, foreign in a space full of intensity and raging storm and mind-plays. Little limbs unfold and settled and straighten in a manner of a very true adult, nails remaining digging softly into the flesh of the blond man's hand. Round, fluffy green eyes met Mycroft's brown ones evenly.

Mycroft could feel the intense knot in his body easing, yet his mind was intentionally and thankfully high on ringing alarm hidden under unreadable and composing expression and the sword still could be seen.

The seeming-to-be-seven-year-old boy inclined his head, "Mycroft." And turned round to look at other man in the eyes, "America."

* * *

**"I won't be able to remember anything after today, maybe even sooner."**

**"We'll dicuss this later, Mycroft."  
**

**"Leave me to my people, America."**

**"You have no right to meddle with my own wish."**

**"When time comes, I'll be back to normal."**

**"America,"**

**"America,"**

**"Please understand."**


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: **I own nothing

**Warning: **Violence towards a child; some quotes (please feel free to correct me if there is any mistake!) and angsty bunny of a plot. And this story isn't brit-picked.

**A/n:** The updates are a little bit irregular, but I will work hard to make sure the chapters worth it.

Thank you for all your support and criticism! I will try my best.

* * *

**2.**

"What are we really are, Arthur?"

A hand smoothed the corny blond hair, calloused and slightly bandaged, as the child raised his bright cerulean hues from the fairy-tale book they were reading, head tilting to have better view of him.

"Why do you ask, love?" Arthur gazed down, fingers combing through soft hair, smiling at the pout of confusion, at the light twinkling with known instincts but lacking the understanding awareness in those two baby blue eyes. It made him thought back to the time when he was born, too faded in his mind yet so clear to the feeling. Raised from earth, forest-shadows surrounding him in green, dirt and soil clinging on his skin – tender and small, confused and utterly alone; his newly-born heart swelled and blood flowed with sudden bursts of living and knowing - breathless, warm and empty.

Arthur tightened the arm around the small child's abdomen just lightly, willing the memory to rush away, to back off with the aches and emotions. He contemplated the soft, round face of Alfred's, the pursed chubby pink lips and the creased brows that looked adorably serious at the matter at hands. Arthur saw open and endless fields soaked in sunlight and grass dancing under the high and crystal clear sky in those blue, blue eyes.

"I dunno. At first I thought I was this land. But the people, Arthur, the people that live around, I feel like they are mines, are me." Arm gestured to his little beating chest, "There are many other things, too. When my rabbit Theodore hurt, the one I found in the forest, I just wanted to hug him real' close and make the pain go 'way. I also know people's stories, like how Mrs. White lost her two front teeth," Alfred giggled, "It's kinda creepy, but it feels…"

"Feels right," Arthur provided him, inclining his chin gently and receiving an enthusiastic nod and a big smile. Oh, he could hug the kid all day. Arthur cherished the tingling feeling nibbling at his heart, making his lids flutter with overwhelming adoration, like standing under the warm glow of the sun, at attention, on focus, floating. This is his, for him, so in peace. "We are not only the land, love."

Winds curled up and stretched and merged with daylights, worming their way through slits between vaults of green leaves, just outside the window of the room. Dots of shadow and light rustled on every surface they landed. Everything was so fresh, so wide and so alive. "We stand for many things, Alfred. We are the people, the culture and knowledge and language our people own. We are the believes, also the histories. We're the national anthem, the flag.

"But we can be something small, something familiar, of home and family." Arthur's hand traced around Alfred's face, "We are meals members share under the cracking flame from the fireplace; we are the kiss from the beloved ones; we are books people read, rested under their pillows, hugged into their chests and stored on the dusty bookshelves; we are crowded roads stepped upon and rode over; we are dark valleys full of trashes and burglars; we are lies that rolled from our people's mouth, truth also, of course my dear...

"We are everything, sometime nothing that could be at all seen. But we are always this one thing formed from those all, dearest, we are what people call nations."

"I'm a nation. I'm England as my people claim me to be," Arthur pressed one of his larger, battered but smooth and gentle palms against his own breast whilst another covered Alfred's heart, so warm. "You are a nation, Alfred."

"You are America."

And when Alfred clutched at Arthur's shirt and looked up into Arthur's emerald hues, Arthur saw something big, something great resting, lurking in that child-like body, still young, still growing and powering. So out of reach, so powerful Arthur almost lost his breath. "I'm America, England. I hear their calls. Always."

(_We hold these truths to be __self-evident__, that __all men are created equal__, that they are endowed by their __Creator__ with certain __unalienable Rights__, that among these are __Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness__._)

He embraced Arthur, short arms could not cover the English nation just yet, "So do they feel it, England?" The grasp seemed to become tighter, surer. "Do they feel that I love England very much, too?"

(_We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown,_)

There was a spark in Arthur's chest; it burst, exploded like lights of a moment losing breaths, a moment of stunning relief and happiness and pain. He wanted to curl up, circling this precious person into himself and never letting go. But the pride, the spine of being a nation imprinted, clawed and craved deep into his immortal flesh and skin. The reason he existed, the way he existing.

Arthur rubbed the back of Alfred's – America, America – back, having an urge to close tight his eyes and weep, but he stared at that far window at the other side of the room, allowing green to melt with bright lights, as if his orbs became liquid.

(_and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved_)

"I don't know, America."

* * *

The blackberry glistened under her flashing working fingertips – plans, plans, schedule - papers from organizations, appointment with Prime Minister at five, sharp six thirty meeting with Belgium ambassador, dark tea and half of a biscuit today – diet's off track again, missions from Region 5 –

"Cancel all meeting for today," Said her boss and without looking up, she cancelled all appointments, giving apologies, sending paperwork, reorganizing the schedule for the day and preparing on the following day.

Dark tea and a plate of biscuits then.

"Just dark tea, no needs for Sherlock's taunts about my diet," Mr. Holmes noted, not rising his eyes from his phone. She didn't nod.

In the corner of her eyes, a child laid his sandy head on Mr. Holmes' lap, sleeping like being in a coma, deep and restless. The other hand of Mr. Holmes placed near the lithe shoulder, large enough to seem to cover a side of the child's back, fingers hovering and bending but not curling into palm, as if protecting, not touching.

Not even the Queen's children could have received this – this familiar and protective gesture.

The only time she saw something like it was when her boss' younger brother managed to drug his mind out, overdosed. Even though Mr. Holmes could walk around as a Lord, discreet and manipulative and controlling, he couldn't stop her from being able to see his dangerous edge, rigidly tearing at his lines, making his smoothly dark suit tight and heavy.

Mr. Holmes had stood there, near his brother's white bed, staring down at Sherlock Holmes' face, looming over with dark clothes and shadows of his stony straight and raged figure. The room was silent, oppressive and whirring in echoes of the chaos happening few hours earlier, as though tightened air surrounding a black dead fire.

Holmes' back faced everything else like a great wall shielding his too pale brother from the world itself, his hand holding his sibling's bony and stained one; his umbrella was tightly and surely gripped. She quietly walked out and closed the door.

Half an hour later, she arranged the guards, twice as much as last time, got the best doctors and had Sherlock Holmes in a rehab when he woke up.

So now, as the car rode on and her boss had hardly changed his posture since his departure from Mr. Kirkland's house ( - a very high-ranking government official that even she had little information about. Kirkland was a mystery; only few knew of his existence. He was like the highest x-file, a solid and irreplaceable presence. If there wasn't Mycroft, British Government failed to chaos; and if there was no Kirkland, there was no England itself. Strange belief, but all her being believed so), she kept to herself the wondering of who the child truly was.

* * *

He felt his body drifting along the darkness; vaporous images flashed through the closed eyelids like flows of memories, catching the edge of his mind and tasting deeply blank. He was floating in his own mind, in the steam of black soothing silk. His skins were caressed and tinged as the flow of silk surging beneath him, leaving his behind bare.

He felt like falling.

His fingers twitched as if wanting to reach out and holding onto anything. But there seemed to be nothing.

_Your choice, England._ Voices whispered, voices reminding.

There were lights seeping into the corner of his eyes, embracing his blinding hues and he buckled.

_Now, now, wake up, we'll wait. Having given you your choice, now we'll see how you grant your own wish._

Still falling down the endless blackening hole, he woke.

And wake he did, but he didn't remember. Those memories like water flowing along the wrinkles of his brain, yet they were untouchable, tingling and didn't belong to him just yet. He looked down at his small hands, strangely calloused for a child. He raised his head to meet with the brown eyes of a middle-aged man (- Mycroft, his head supplied, trust him -) sitting stiffly and watching on the sofa at the far corner of the well decorated room as he laid on what seemed to be a very comfortable and large bed.

He remembered his name was Arthur.

* * *

The space under the bed was dark and safe as he hid with blanket rolled around his shoulders like a cloak minutes later after waking up. There was no hoods, but he could bear with that. He needed bow and arrows, didn't know why, yet felt the must. Never be careful enough with those evil creatures in the forests and the enemies from some far away lands.

The 'Mycroft' man was here, too, but one lone man could only do so much. Arthur must be prepared.

"Would you please come out, Kirkland?" Mycroft asked, patiently. So conspicuous was Mycroft. Didn't he have any idea how sharp the hunters were? Just a silent whisper of a careless foot would be your death. Suddenly Arthur had an urge to crawl out and tug Mycroft under here with him.

And Kirkland? Who was Kirkland?

"I don't know any Kirkland." He voiced out, trustfully confused and slightly on guard. "If you mean me, then it's Arthur, pwease." He wrapped the blanket around him tighter, hating how vulnerable and honest he had sounded.

There was a pause. And Arthur squirmed, couldn't curl up into himself enough. Waiting.

"Very well," it was like a deep sign, but not unkind, so much well-worn as if Mycroft had dealt with something like this before. Experienced warrior then, Arthur mused. "Arthur, come out now. We wouldn't like to be late for tea, would we?"

Tea, what was tea? Mycroft surely knew how to bring up questions for him. Distracting methods, of course.

"What is tea?" As soon as the question rolled out of his mouth, a surge of memories hit him, making him whimper. He clutched at his head, breathless and not noticing Mycroft skipped the floor alerted, dropping down and trying to have a look at him but carefully not reaching out. "Are you alright?" Mycroft's words felt like a demand.

"F-fine." Arthur managed, coiling and retreating from the older man's partly covered figure by the bed. "I saw an old woman drink a cup of...tea?"

Silence. Like a passing thought and thoughtful hums. "I remember how it tastes, too. Weird but - "

"Would you like to try it?" Patience again, smooth like a white wooden pillar.

"..."

Arthur felt the carpet beneath was so soft he could fall asleep. He glimpsed the feeling of wet grass and warm, fresh soil under his bare feet, and he missed them dearly. "If I'm out, will you stab me?" (Hunters grabbing, hunters sneering, swords rising-)

It was so honest and sincerely questioning he was able to taste the sorrow of its at the tip of his tongue. Mycroft was quiet, so quiet as if he was recovering from a drown or strangle.

"No. Of course not." The answer was firm and certain, a hardening truth. No doubts. No lies. It made his heart ached and burst, and he wanted to close his eyes and weep.

"Sorry, I'm sorry," Arthur breathed, like sobbing, so overwhelming and drowning.

"Come out now."

He did.

* * *

The maids of Holmes' estate professionally ignored the blanketed child seating opposite from Mycroft, wide eyes and so very shy. The unruly blond hair stuck out under the false hood created by the wrapping richly-patterned brown sheet whilst emerald hues silently looked around, perking and observing, as though the enemies would jump out from nowhere.

It ached Mycroft Holmes, more than he would ever admit even to himself.

Because something had once seemed unbreakable and untouchable, now became so small, frightened and cautious. It made him thought of Sherlock, little Sherlock who barely reached his sixth year, bracing himself against taunting words of misunderstanding and moronic mouths, against cold hands of a cold lipped mother and strong iron grips of a father. So little but had acknowledged how to act strong, how to fight under the dead, harsh grasp of life, like an instinct, innocence that had not lasted. Souls Mycroft had tried to protect but failed.

That was why he hated failing, couldn't accept failing, couldn't obtain and create failure.

And somehow now when green eyes glanced at him just a little above white tablecloths, tiny hands worming around the steaming cup like hugging and mouth opening as though it had tasted wonder; Mycroft felt like he had failed greatly again.

* * *

Arthur, he spoke English well, spelling excellently and writing more so if not seeped with the childish nature of his body. After his first cuppa, Arthur had asked for papers and written down with perfectly curled handwriting the Hamlet Play right on the table.

"To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer, The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune, or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles, and by opposing end them: to die, to sleep –," the child quoted, in perfect Tudor accent.

The staff stared and Mycroft sipped at his tea chastely, listening to the quoted masterpiece.

* * *

When she entered Mr. Holmes' office the next day carrying a tray with two cups of tea – one dark and another milky (she said her name for today was Vimerias), her boss was at his desk as usual, eyes sharply reading through documents and making plans and actions.

Like an unintentionally hearty musical changing note to the normal harmony of national and worldwide work, the child – who had nicely and shyly offered to her an "I'm Arthur, pwease to meet you Miss" behind Mycroft trouser-ed leg as more than five guards hovered after them – sat obediently on one of the chairs, coloring and spreading drawn papers every surface of the hard wooden table. A blanket was wrapped over his shoulders comfortably and protecting-y.

"Thanks, Jane," Arthur said as she placed his tea with a lot of milk down. She almost blanched at his saying her real name, but composing herself sharply, still stiff when the child raised one of his picture up for her to see. She could feel Mr. Holmes watching them both closely.

The picture was a messily drawn image of Britain and Europe by black crayon; special was that there was a part of land bridging the two regions together and dark blue color smearing, covering the part.

"That's how we'd become an island!" was the child serious, proud and sad exclaim.

* * *

When the Prime Minister had a meeting with Mr. Holmes at ten that day, the man had looked around the office with astonished eyes at the gallery of drawing hanging on the rich, dark walls. "Change your taste in art, I see."

Mr. Holmes just twitched up the corner of his lip. "An art of British history, I assure you."

She nodded curtly and politely at the Prime Minister, going straight to the table and fetched the box of crayons before leaving. Accompanying Mr. Holmes in ignoring the funny look the Minister was having.

Oh, she knew they were both enjoying it, for different reasons anyway.

* * *

"**Are you wondering why you had acted quite tensely with America?"**

**"Being in the presence of one's own country tend to make one…defensive, I suppose."**

"**Ah, indeed. That's why we've always been on the front, it encourages the soldiers."**

**.  
**

"**It makes you uncomfortable, Mycroft. So exposed, so much, I assume. Don't do sentiment – Many Holmeses have declared."**

"**It's the truth."**

"**Oh, don't lie, I'm in your shoes. I just know, Mycroft."**

**.  
**

"**I don't manipulate my children. And even if I do, you will always come."**

"**It always tends to be dangerous, that tendency of mines, dear England. If you're anyone else or any other countries, I might have to put you down."**

"**But I'm not, am I? And it's a disaster if you kill your own country."**

**.  
**

"**It destroys you, Mycroft. I hope it not."**

"**It's my choice, even you're England, you have no say in it."**

"**If one day I'm over my mind, Mycroft, kill me, fetch the people."**

**.  
**

**"England."  
**

**.  
**

"**You give me no choices, don't you."**

"**Yes.** **Because I'm England; and we can't never be careful enough, my dear Holmes."**

**.  
**

"**Is it your wish, England?"**

"**No."**

"**My choice is for devotion of humanity."**

"**My wish is selfishly myself."**


	3. Chapter 3

**Warning: **Extra long chapter, angst practically oozing all over the place, violence, dark thoughts, ecetera.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

**A/n:** Thank you for all your reviews/favorites/alerts and I'm sorry for off-schedule update. I've been pretty busy lately, swimming in the sea of essays and tests and eyes wide open for late-night-writing. It feels like my brain was drained dry.

Enjoy.

* * *

**3.**

Mycroft Holmes was a man of means, connections and knowledge. A superior intellect, a manner of complete control, clever at when to strike and when to smooth and a deep wrap of the human minds applying him the upper hand to grasp, to understand, to twist and to manipulate. Some said he was a master holding the strings to people, setting them up, playing them under his thumb, leading them to the paths he had meticulously and profoundly drawn out, performing their roles on the necessary stage. Not to any audiences, but to his will.

Sherlock Holmes had not overestimated when he said Mycroft was the most dangerous man you had ever met.

But even the most dangerous man had his moment of dangerous uncertainty.

There was a knock at his office door, not pressed or weighted or at high-level enough to be an adult, but too polite, knowing and sharp for any child. Here went many possibilities, many odds. A name appeared in his string of thoughts, which at the very first was already a dominant percentage, yet brought many questions. Even if one held an observation to the biggest certainty, one shall not be careless when drawing a final conclusion. Because tables always turned, there was no absolute, a man could just play smart and hard to keep the advantages and control his way.

"Come in," it was curt, layered with forefront acknowledgement and readied waiting.

When the little figure of Arthur's appeared, blanket fold neatly and dismissively on one hand, back straight like a solid pillar and steps not bouncing or innocently honest or shy; Mycroft Holmes was not at all surprised.

There were only questions and confirmations.

"Do have a sit, England."

The child-like body seated himself too gracefully and experienced on the armchair facing Mycroft's desk. The chair that held guests – the people who were to be questioned, effortlessly peeled apart thoroughly like a target had been set up unknowingly willingly, to be aimed with razor mind and manipulative masks – now braced to open its cushioned self wide and warm and vulnerable for a child, who looked like a man knowing his intention and sure with his body. Ease and control were hold in those little hands placed on the handles. A kid looked at Mycroft in the eyes, but an old life's smile graced the lips, "It won't be long, Mycroft."

Mycroft shifted very lightly and pointedly in his seat, "I must admit I can't fathom your intention." England put his tilted head on his palm, not breaking eye-contract, and Mycroft continued as though he himself wasn't analyzing every movement of the other's, "And I'm not a man who will go along with which is just deemed, obvious."

"A man of reasons, always in control," it was said in the perfect voice of a seven-year-old, and Mycroft clenched his jaw minutely, eyes hardened, all infuriated and sharp sword-like lines. England sighed, a sound of an ancient rumbled throat and infinitely sorrow, "We've been through this before, Mycroft. I'm not playing hard. I don't want to push anyone."

"It's surely proved to be quiet hard," Mycroft cut back, imperiously composing and vengeful for the neat–as–a–thin–silver–string and itching incision on his left chest. He might not be a fighter or a warrior, but Mycroft knew how to hold an end of a sword to someone's neck. "When you are a presence of people, of general needs and purposes, every single one of your actions affects the whole."

And little shoulders tensed, brow ceased in contained anger – anger that was so used to being wrapped up, kept closed, carefully fold before it could burst. "I've broken the rule," England spoke unevenly, as if he was looking down a deep, dark cliff, feet only a vague distance from falling and shattering. "Many times already, but this is the biggest."

Emerald gaze sliced away, looking over his own tiny body, "And I break one to come back now." England raised his hand, to see the flesh or to cut off any of Mycroft's sentences, "But I don't want to mislead, there's still regret in my action. I want to be sure for the last time if 'myself' is going to the right direction, Mycroft."

A pause, near silence. Near because the two involved individuals were too efficient, foretold, and calculating to let silence reign. And he thought back to little Arthur, the little person that would let the silence swallow him whole. "He says his name is only Arthur, always insisting everyone on calling himself so."

There was a twitch up the corner of England's lips, "I ensure he does that."

"He doesn't remember 'Kirkland'," a pointed reminder, a glimpse of a certain sharp deduction. Mycroft, he had strings, now he needed to stitch them together. However, he always made certain he would not do the legwork.

"I make sure he won't."

Eyes contacted again, battles within battles. England creased his eyebrows in a repeated honesty, deep and sorrowful. "Please don't take my will lightly."

And Mycroft, in that maelström of honesty, such bared confession and desperation – it was not a battle of will, not a battle of whom was the most clever and the sharpest, not a mind-play or mad fury – it was a telling, a saw in Mycroft's own action and reaction –, felt misjudged and lost within.

Which was in and of itself an unbelievable incredibility and laughably ironic.

But England before him laid out his inside under the condemning eyes of others, exposed in front of Mycroft the lands, the time and the dark flesh of a heart, leaving Mycroft a King who must step down from his great golden throne, asking for amends and prophecies.

"What is your wish, England?"

* * *

The sky thickened with dark clouds, like oozed dark-purple skins, sagging under the weight of heavy drops ready to fall down and burst on the ground. Mycroft was still seating in his chair, hands fold carefully under his chin and umbrella-bared. There seemed to be a raging storm under the surface of calm skins and smooth dark suit, twisting his feature in a strange way, making it tighten, shadowed with thoughts and decisions.

The light outside was dying, cut sharp and thin like a seen-through and worn-out plastic layer, the unlit office filled with patches of false illusions, stretching the solid, long and thick shadow of a man who carried on his shoulders the responsibilities so big across the room as the carpet underneath couldn't soften anything.

Mycroft was a statue - whirring storm of a mind wrapped with a still control like calmness. He always made sure to feel the solidity of the ground under his shoed feet and the quiet of vaporous peace merged with the soft breathing of a sleeping child. Mycroft recalled his younger time, when those veins of his throbbed with ambitions and the determined want to rule and control. When he could still be slightly careless and make mistakes to mark his experience.

- When he stepped into the room that held Britain's biggest and most well-kept secret sharing a cup of tea with the Queen herself; green eyes immediately greeted his, already having hands around the depth of his vow.

There had been a slight but certain and respectful dip of chin, emeralds twinkling as if rippling gentle waves on the tranquil surface of a very profound lake.

"Here are you, young man. Thank you."

Hearing the exact two words, Mycroft had known instantly and so directly that was for him. And whilst remaining standing in black suit and polished shoes, for the first time in his life, Mycroft felt an absolute honesty and gratefulness of so many that the cold ice in his heart felt burnt. Her Majesty held out her white-gloved soft hand as though an elegant breeze in the windy land of Nobles, landing them on his shoulders each, so very lightly yet weighted and cold like a sacred sword placed upon a Knight's shoulders bellowing his upcoming loyalty and devotion.

"You are now the man who works for this land – The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland."

The burn of Her fingertips he could still feel now. Vows carved deep into bone, to soul and willingness.

The lines around Mycroft's eyes formed clear, drawn deep on his skin as marks of tension and wills and remembrance. There was a strong fire burning at his spine, a richly bitter taste of determination in his tongue.

He was going to cross the line of his vow to protect it.

He was, with all his worth and power, going to break England's wish himself.

* * *

Jane walked briskly on her high heels, eyes straight ahead like hard stones with pointed purpose. Her black dress suit lined the curls of her body into powerful and professional contours, warning every barricade to move out of her way. The blackberry gripped in her hand was like a ready weapon and almighty method as a folder was hold on her other one.

The paperwork and the process were going to be complicated if not messy and irritating. Too many services to go through, questions may arise while discretion was a must, always.

But she'd dealt with worse emergencies; she was perfectly and experienced-y capable. If not, she would have been gladly to pack all her things and have Mycroft get rid of the burden of a useless and incompetent assistant. At least that would be more efficient and much less time-consuming.

No, what troubled her was what she had seen.

In the form of Mycroft Holmes and that mysterious boy, Arthur.

Arthur seemed to be a perfectly normal child, small feature for his age and shy in a cautious way. But his mind, his knowledge was something she could not put her finger on, almost unnerving her to a certain point of frustration. It was like something so unexpected slamming hard onto her familiar and well-prepared surface, and while in its presence, she couldn't help but be truly honest and open. Someone had peeled her guts apart and she unknowingly allowed them to look into the details. The smile of those little pink lips made her mouth ache for an up-twitch. Those green eyes peered at her through long pale lashes thoroughly like reading her life story just in brief seconds and bottling up her soul. Even years working with a mind like Mr. Holmes had not prepared her for this - this unexpected, seemingly harmless little person.

Who half an hour ago curled up into the deep dark-cushioned underbelly of the chair facing Mr. Holmes' desk, letting the quietness and blackened shadows crawl at his baby skins, engulfing him in a blue and purple embrace, leaving him looking so battered and barely alive in his unconsciousness.

It wasn't physical, it was some things belonging to the deep inner side.

Holmes had his right hand surround a side of the kid's head, placed solely there and fingers bent stiffly with strangely light touches; his left hand held his faithful umbrella, white-knuckled under the coiling impact of his palm. Rigid air dug into flesh and raked. Dark circles threatened his gazes and Mycroft Holmes looked like he was gripping a knife too sharp, ready to pierce through the figure he was holding close but kept distance.

A man knowing clearly what he was capable of doing and always realizing how vulnerable the person he was to hurt.

It was frightening.

It was like a picture of tragedy.

And now each step she took grown heavier as her flow of thoughts got more tangled and worried. The request of her boss imprinted in her dutiful mind as well as his hardened and haunted brown eyes.

Tomorrow Arthur would be the child of Holmes.

* * *

Life wasn't fair. They had always said, and Sherlock had always sent a look of angry despair and fights to his way whenever he uttered the sentence. It had been and always was an excuse. A repeated excuse that got people to believe in it and inconsiderately became a fact.

"If life is indeed unfair, it doesn't mean we should let it remain that way," seven-year-old Sherlock had said to him when the child's eyes stared hard at the carpeted floor in front of their mother's closed door. They both had the image of the tears their mother had used the solid wooden barrier to push them away and prevent them from seeing. Push them too far away.

Mycroft had said nothing, and still nothing twelve years later as Sherlock's smoky eyes looked up at him with all accusations, anger and almost defeated. Sherlock's canthus were too hollow and dry like a cracking laughter of miserable madness and suffering. His brother was pale with drug scratching at his brain, high in all the whiteness.

Life wasn't fair. They were all under the upper hands and there were rules of consequence for those who played God, prizes for a little compulsion and impulsivity.

Mycroft glanced down at the small person whose golden strands were under his fingers. A person created for purposes not of his own, for paths he had not chosen or even acknowledged. A shield of real flesh and skin, born to be shed, ripped into pieces. An uncontrolled existence of its own enormous soul.

This was England. But this was also a child whose memories were still far-fetched, not allowed to return to him.

Might Mycroft not be able to change the unchangeable, he would change what he was able to change.

* * *

Arthur remembered raising his both hands to receive his crayon box, murmuring a thank you for Jane. He avoided looking at her in the eyes, because she seemed to be very stiff and uncomfortable with it. Like his gazes alone could tell all her secrets and display her honesty. But they somehow felt so right, the things he knew about her. As if they were supposed to be there, in the whole of his.

"Mycroft told me," said Arthur as he laid out his papers and continued to paint. He could felt Jane's attention leaving her phone – people always tended to do that, always focusing on his calls.

"About what?"

Clever, sharp Jane. Already knowing what she was dealing with. There would be no assurances, no soft words and tender questions like any other adults mistakenly treating him with. She knew he was not an ordinary child (and what kind of child he was, he wasn't sure – Maybe Mycroft would answer that question for him some other times). But he still lied anyway, he just wanted to make her feel comfortable.

"About your real name is Jane," He kept his eyes on the half-drawn figures on the sheet of paper under his small hands and messy crayons. Arthur stopped abruptly when he realized those painted people were a little girl named Jane and her mother, Mary.

(Little Jane would be holding her mother's hands, leading her through the crowded road of a Christmas night to reach their home because her mom was so tired and clumsy it made her frustrated and loved her mom even more. She wanted to become stronger and more capable to take care of her mom. Because Mary's boss was a filthy man with greedy palms that always wandered to touch. And they needed the petit money to keep on living so Mary bit down the foul bile in her throat and acted like nothing happened.

Under the colorful lights, two persons held their hands together to move on, to keep warm and share emotions. Jane would not look at the warm glows of those bakeries or the twinkling smell of cooked food. There was laughter and unending flows of people, and her mother's pulse was so silent and alive in the spreading noise. And might she take a look at the grand Christmas tree at the square, it was just for a wish. Wishing for her mother to have a better life.)

And Arthur hurriedly slipped the paper away – hiding it among the others, mind and eyes still flooded with million neon lights and shared warmth and unspoken sad wishes. Jane – strong Jane, sweet Jane who was now more than capable, who now sent her mother gifts and flowers on Christmas day – was quiet; Arthur could feel the softened glance she gave him, a glance one may have whenever seeing another person perform a trick that they were much more skillful at doing.

Stiffness still touched her body's lines, but it was the stiffness of being in control.

That was better than nothing.

And when he finally held up his head to see her, black clouded suddenly his vision.

There was a man standing ahead of him, emerald eyes just like his. The man gazed at him kneeling in the middle of darkness, "Let me in charge now, Arthur."

* * *

"What is your wish, England?"

Arthur could see Mycroft clearly – his smoothly stony feature and tightly sincere low voice. Mycroft here sat with time threading every fiber of his being, brightened and deepened with every mental power and awareness, a dark-like-oil figure that stood in the middle of a black hole of the universe, attracting and hungering for all the pitch-dark truths and deep belief and minds.

This Mycroft made him feel and scared.

But the man standing next to him in this blackening space of his mind, controlling his body seemed unfazed, as though it was what he faced with every day, as though he had a crave-ness bigger and more terrified. As though life was a hole of evil and he drowned himself in it.

Arthur wanted to back off, to run away, to hide from all of this madness and honesty and reality.

Yet hands so strong and sure kept him in place, as a firm and harsh grip of your father when he told you to grow up and fight back and win no matter the cost. So much he looked up at the man and on the verge of shaking his head.

Who was this man - this strong force of power and tragedies?

Arthur felt his – their – arms spread wide, so open it was like a trap, "I wish to end this pain, Mycroft. Even if just temporarily."

The man locked eyes with Arthur (it felt strange when they did it in a mind), there was truth and desperation and harshness, like tears and screams that could not be released. He felt a connection between them, as though they breathed with the same heart – They were a paper, which was ripped into two, came to be glue back but could not help feeling each other foreign with all the changed folds and ugly torn edges.

"It's going to be fine."

* * *

When Arthur opened his green eyes, it was to the calm beating of Mycroft's layered, firm pulse. Each throb sent a wave of feelings Arthur couldn't name, yet for them he was alive.

Mycroft was very still, a stillness that raced with thoughts and intentions and restlessness. He gradually raised his little hand and pressed it against where that living rhythm came from. Mycroft tensed like an instinctive machine or just a stranger to all human touches.

Arthur gave him calmness.

Mycroft gave back a minute inhale, then silence, and finally an explanation of how he would be an Arthur Kirkland Holmes.

* * *

After a week the Holmes' estate was home to Arthur, and its histories since it was just a wild wood awaiting for human's hands to cultivate had already stored at the back of his remembrances. He knew every corner, every hiding place and room before Mycroft had a chance to lead him around the old and delicate architecture.

The way Arthur touched the walls and pressed his ears against them as though listening to the singing silent speeches of stories (–_ here, an Abigail had ended her thwarted love with a knife over ten decades ago, a kid named Sherrinford hid that knife - a gift of his grandmother who said it was from her twin sister Abby – still stained with blood of a bird – half a century later, and a Sherlock found it in a crack behind the portrait hung on the wall of his father, Sherrinford, thirty years following _–),like he lived here long and loved astonished the staff in the large estate.

And while he wandered around, he was with his brown blanket.

* * *

Images (or were they memories?) often resurfaced very suddenly, in a flash and made little sense.

(But it didn't mean it made Arthur feel any less.)

There were pieces of papers and notes everywhere in the room he was used to enough to call his – Messily drawn and colored pictures and symbols, notebooks full of many handwritings that weren't his, yet belonged to him – All were from great someone in the far centuries in the past, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Eliot, Dickens, Austen … Arthur'd lost count but he remembered each one clearly.

Mycroft read all of his noting. Kneeling beside him while he was sprawling on the carpeted floor, dancing out words from mind and pen's points. Or soothing his hair like a calm breeze in the middle of his whirling storm of whispered explanations about a painting or unknown nights of inspirations and high waves of emotions of some famous British authors, while he relaxed his head on those laps, which had turned into something far too assuring and familiar.

* * *

Mycroft wasn't home much, but Arthur knew when he was at the time being, when he came back and what mood he would be in. It became a routine that Arthur would seat himself at the front stairs of the Holmes's estate and waited before a black sedan arrived with Mycroft Holmes in his perfect suit and manners ten minutes later.

"Has daddy phoned you ahead, dear? Holmeses are surely discreet with their affection," the chef of the estate, Mrs. Teagan, had teased with that warmth-full voice of her when he appeared at the kitchen, asking for some dark tea and no-calories-biscuits because the meeting with the French ambassador hadn't gone very well. She was a woman who would steal your heart after a straight-forward and rich laughter, who would pinch your cheeks and asked why you were so bony a wind surely could sweep you away with it, while you looked at her buxom body in childish admiration and adultery fear of her theory about fitness-standard.

"Or are you both just telepathic?"

He smiled up at her shyly, as if embarrassed and confused. The hearted hair-rubbing and warm assuring laugh was well worth it before he could vomit any confusing and knowing sentences.

* * *

"Why do they say you're my daddy?" Arthur asked, one of Dickens's pieces opened on his laps, halfway through being read.

"People tend to assume irrelevant things," there was a nonchalant lifted eyebrow in Mycroft's voice. And Arthur suddenly watched him with a critical interest of a pure child.

"There is no smoke without fire," the child said with all the wisdom, "You tell me that."

Mycroft didn't bother clearing his throat, "When one brings home a child, there are rumors to satisfy some onlookers, who don't know any better. People like to talk; it makes them feel clever. As I said, it's irrelevant."

"Or, you can say I'm your… guardian," he added after exact one minute of silence, not raising his eyes from the documents on his desk once.

Arthur chewed on his lower lip, creasing his brows and looking very thoughtful, then murmuring, "I like 'Mycroft' better though."

No sooner had he said it than he rolled his blanket around himself as if a protecting barrier and ran out of the library, leaving Mycroft who hadn't decided to be surprised or not.

* * *

Feet ran through the forest of trees and shadows, fleeing away from the thundering footsteps of the hunters. Little hands torn pass hidden and thick-set pathways; he didn't even dare to breath.

A little bit more.

Just a little bit.

Then he would be safe.

Please let him be s-

A arrow pierced his flesh, almost sending him falling over the round, ripping at his heart.

He couldn't breathe.

Pain, so much pain-

But he kept running, even when blood flowed out his wound, dampening his cloak, oozing onto the ground. His head pounded, his ears ringing with deafening screaming, his body burning and rigidly numb. His two eyes opened wide; one half was of a dead animal and the other half struggling.

He didn't know how he hid, he just wanted to crawl out of his skin, nails digging into infant flesh, at his stopped heart, rasping and sobbing and thrashing and screaming. He bent his arm to reach for the arrow but could not tear it out. He was wailing, a creature that couldn't reach death to get rid of its pain while it had fallen out of the verge of living.

A creature in between.

An agony lasted for eternity.

It was horrifying, it was terrible-

He shuddered-y curled up with pain, bringing soil and dust and blood and tears into himself, embracing his dead heart in his ribcage.

When his eyes burst open, the four walls of his room were surrounding him. He pressed his tiny palms against his mouth, muffling all of his screams and sobs.

* * *

As morning barely came over the horizon, Arthur was already awake.

He felt a strange wave of calmness wash over his being, as if a soldier knowing and ready for his battle death - a grip of acceptance then came the fearlessness.

He had realised.

He didn't tell Mycroft, but thought the man'd known at the beginning anyway.

To escape pain was to die.

* * *

"**Here are your biscuits, dear. Oh my god, you look so terrible. Nightmare, little dear?"**

"**Thanks, I'm fine, Mrs. Teagan." **

"**Are you sure, dear? I will tell Mr. Holmes when he gets back."**

"**It's fine! Really."**

"**I've checked."**

"**My heart is still beating."**


End file.
